How to avoid the “B” word!

I am sure there is not a mom in the Capital Region who has not heard the “B” word yet! Why, I just heard it in my office the other day, from a very unsuspecting youngster. Even one of my own children used to utter the “B” word about two weeks into every summer!

“I’M BORED!”

Those are the words that inspired me to invent a way to put an element of surprise and excitement into our summer days.

Take four large plastic cups. Label with a Sharpie Pen: Big Events, Water, Everyday Activities, and Rainy Day Activities

Take little pieces of paper and write ideas down on them that your family likes to do. Put the pieces of paper into the appropriate cup.

“Big Events” might be a once a month type of activity: Hoffmans, Great Escape, Cart racing, going to the mall

2 Responses

When my kids were younger and started uttering the “B” word, I would find my list of undone chores and start delegating. If the chores were completed without too much complaining, a reward usually followed.

I just finished reading a really interesting book called Unequal Childhoods: Race, Class and Family Life by Annette Laueau. It is an ethnographic study of middle-class, working-class and poor children. She was looking at parenting styles between the different classes, specifically looking at “concerted cultivation” and “accomplishment of natural growth”. She found that middle-class children whose schedules were largely dictated by adults and had many adult-supervised/organized activities didn’t really know what to do with chunks of unstructured playtime and would complain of being bored and seek out their parents to entertain them or tell them activities they should do. The working-class and poor children who were in few to none adult organized/supervised activities were not accustomed to interacting much with adults and were adept at filling large chunks of unstructured time and never complained of being bored. They were very creative about games, made them up, including elaborate rules, and were adept at also conflict-resolution amongst themselves when someone violated the agreed-upon rules. The study was very interesting. So my question is how do we encourage children to be creative during their unstructured time, while also letting them be involved with supervised/formal activities?